“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Just in Denmark, not in Georgia! Aren’t we lucky that nothing
is rotten in our kingdom? Poor old Denmark! Come on, Georgia – let’s give them a hand! Helping others is always good; especially when you can effortlessly provide assistance. I don’t mean help in its economic sense. We can’t afford that much. I mean help in what we feel especially powerful and qualified as a republic, say politics – mostly in

the field of interaction among business, media and government. Here, we have huge positive experience: Business transactions in Georgia are always clean and transparent; every business act is well-documented and preserved in archives so that the courts can use them as evidence if necessary; businessmen are honest sellers and buyers and never lie to each other; the deals they make are always known to society, especially when it comes to ownership of television stations; and most importantly, businesses take huge pleasure in paying their dues to the government because they know that every lari paid by them into the country’s coffers will work to the benefit of a working man; if by any chance their property is unfairly confiscated by government, the next administration will return the lost property in a blink of an eye; businesses are never trying to buy into media in order to use it to their own benefit, In a word, business knows its place as well as the role of media and government, and does everything in its power to let them operate in unison to the best advantage of the Georgian people. As far as the media is concerned, they are not biased at all in Georgia; they are fair and objective, saying nothing about their autonomy from those whom they cover; all fifty TV companies that are on the air today in this huge commercial market are fully remunerative and do not depend on private money; broadcast journalists are overly educated and know their mother tongue to such perfection that they never make any linguistic errors when talking to fellow citizens; no TV station here looks and sounds like it belongs to one particular political party and serves its interest exceptionally, and no Georgian journalist is engaged politically or works under the influence of this or that political power. What about the government? Georgia has never seen a government which used to be friendlier towards media than the current one; this administration and the previous one too display no tendency of keeping TV companies under their clout because they support freedom of speech; they do not get angry and concerned when they see their caricature on air; the Georgian government is against their laudation on air, and love listening to criticism in their address – the heavier the better; as a matter of fact, if the government hears about unfair treatment of media, they are ready to ferociously defend the broadcasters of a true word; they are also thinking day and night to return to businessmen the unlawfully forfeited enterprises, money and real estate on everyday basis – this is their major thought and preoccupation, and they successfully manage to live up to our expectations in restoring justice in the country without any delay; in response, the grateful nation appreciates the governmental love and care. This is the way business, media and government cooperate in Georgia – tightly, reasonably, hand-in-hand. There goes a smart proverb in our language, saying that a good story-teller needs a good listener for getting the message across. Listen in well and you will get what I am talking about! I don’t really know if the Shakespearian officer Marcellus of ‘Rotten Denmark’ could smell some rats in Georgia as well, provided the European Union manages to send him over on a quick business trip, but I am more than certain that he would have a couple of reasons to qualify us as a state where something is rotten too. Let us now drop the caustic and sarcastic tone that I have resorted to briefly, and line out several directions of thought: the people of Georgia have dedicated a quarter of a century to the cause of a gigantic polit-economical alteration, going from the ephemeral communist endeavor to the tested-in-time capitalism, thus radically changing its ideology and vision of the future. This meant that Georgia turned its back to the Russian imperial way of existence and took to Western political ideals. Seemingly, the cause has been retained gallantly, but the symptoms of missing the past have always been there. The fight between the two vectors of development has never ended, which is revealed in our people’s varied attitudes to the country’s political prospect – the Western philosophy of life, based on the freedom of speech and independence of judiciary has formally been adopted by our ever-vacillating society and permanently shaking governments, but those two elevated Western values have never overwhelmed us full time and swing. We are still in the process of political maturation, hence the current model of interface between business, media and government here. The feeling is that this land will remain for a while as the place of sparring between the old and the new, and the winner is going to be the side that demonstrates strong and founded interest towards partnership with Georgia.